GNU bc ends 11-year beta test, releases 1.7

https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bc/

by bandrami • 9 years ago

55 30 9 years ago

ftp.gnu.org

tmaly• 9 years ago

Finally! I have been waiting for them forever

bandrami5• 9 years ago

No announcement on info-gnu or on the bc web page; I only noticed because I was about to download the ancient version to check something.

exhilaration• 9 years ago

For those unfamiliar with bc, here's the man page: https://www.gnu.org/software/bc/manual/html_mono/bc.html

amirouche• 9 years ago

an arbitrary precision calculator language

Everybody use GNU Guile already :)

dgquintas• 9 years ago

1.07, actually. Title is wrong.

bandrami5• 9 years ago

Gah, sorry. Touch-typing failed me again.

juliangoldsmith• 9 years ago

I believe it should also be a 17-year beta test, since 1.06 was released in 2000.

ufo• 9 years ago

What changed from 1.06 to 1.07?

EddieRingle• 9 years ago

Unsure, but it broke compilation of the Linux kernel for me. (linux-mainline on Arch)

pmiller2• 9 years ago

Why is bc even needed for a kernel compile?!?

bandrami5• 9 years ago

The changelog covers 16 years, and is 1500 lines long

dennisse• 9 years ago

Changelog: https://pastebin.com/J6gpwVBF

asveikau• 9 years ago

The US president 3 times over? (According to the changelog 1.06 is from the year 2000)

barelyusable• 9 years ago

Come on guys. Everyone knows real h4ck3rs are using apcalc: http://www.isthe.com/chongo/tech/comp/calc/calc-mirror.html

ComputerGuru• 9 years ago

Care to expound on the differences between the two?

paxcoder2• 9 years ago

What reference am I missing here?

darpa_escapee• 9 years ago

My high school had Calc AB, Calc BC and AP Calc.

paxcoder2• 9 years ago

Does anyone know why the default scale is 0 (meaning division rounds down by default)?

rsync• 9 years ago

No idea but initial system setup on every system I touch is to alias bc to 'bc -l'.

I use bc tens of times per day ...

xorcist• 9 years ago

I use bc all the time, yet I still managed to miss that option. Thanks!

bandrami5• 9 years ago

Historical compatibility. Back in the day you couldn't always guarantee you even had a coprocessor, so scale > 0 could get arbitrarily expensive.

seanp2k2• 9 years ago

To commemorate this momentous achievement, they're changing the name to `ad`

OneOneOneOne• 9 years ago

In bc 10 / 3 => 3

It yields integer values unless started with -l option. What's up with that?

yrro• 9 years ago

bc has a scale variable, which determines the precision of calculations. By default it is 0, but running with -l sets it to 20 (among other things).

sussjsiisiwk• 9 years ago

Here's a handy bc wrapper I picked up somewhere.

    cat /usr/local/bin/solve                                                               
    #!/bin/sh
    bc << EOF
    scale=4
    $@
    quit
    EOF

$ solve "4*49+732"

Johnny_Brahms• 9 years ago

As someone that has done most my maths using perl during the 90s and lately scheme, I have managed to miss BC completely.

Since some people here seem to use it daily, are there any other reasons to use it than "i am used to it" or that you actually need arbitrary precision?

bfu• 9 years ago

There are very few console programs which thinks they know better than me what I want when I press Ctrl+C and bc is one of them.

GNU bc ends 11-year beta test, releases 1.7

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